Beautiful Nightmare

If Yvette Burnerman was anything,it was optimistic,orphaned at the young age of fourteen,she was forced into the streets to make meets end, all of her family members and relatives she could hardly remember had all refused to take her in after the unfortunate demise of her parents,she worked at odd jobs day and night and fed off the scraps of lush restaurants and cafes and brought what ever she could home to preserve for the next bitter day.Even when there were no scraps Yvette still smiled through her day's work as though all was well, everyone who knew her always knew she wasn't always far from a good laugh despite her having a hundred things to be sad about.

As the years passed Yvette's tiny clothings started to skip way past her thighs,her lush platinum blonde hair spilled down her back in waves lacking bands to keep them in check,her now huge breasts pushed at her unfit clothing demanding attention and being unable to afford new options she settled for her mother's old clothes that she could never quite bring herself to do away with as she had done with most of the things in the tiny cottage that her parents had left her,she worked magic when it came to needles,her hands moved like it was made for sewing,she made her dresses from the scratch and with the old material of her mother's clothes,promising herself that she would one day make dresses so beautiful that no one would ever look away from them. The beauty she earned as she grew drew attention from every alley she walked,she turned heads without meaning too and little children stopped and stared in awe,at the little salon where she worked during the day, her colleagues started to whisper about her saying she should be attending balls to marry instead of wasting her time on the fashion training she attended every evening , people started to come to her for ridiculous demands ,demands that would make her question her virtue and eventually everything came crashing when her , madame at the salon requested she married her son since it was the best option for her, Yvette had smiled in her charming way as she always did and turned the woman down,the next day she was fired for turning the heat of the shop up by a few notches,it was then the idea of the maid service occurred to her,she saw the application for it in a newspaper and applied, she was happy at the concept of of the live in residence and the free food plus salary,she had indeed felt optimistic at the prospect of it all.

But now as old Jack hobbled on in the snow,the cold leather straps of his reigns burning through her sorry excuse for gloves and pinching her fingers a strange hue of purple,she didn't at all feel optimistic,all around her was covered in a blanket of snow and the town was no where in sight,she breathed out and her breath came out in a cloud above her head

Why did her application had to be assigned off to the far North?, Was it truly worth the whole stress?

Old Jack whined beneath her and she realized that he too must be terribly cold and tired, after all he has carried her all through her journey, she dismounted him,rummaged through her bag for her last apple fed it to the grateful old horse and led him on by his reigns through the thick snow,he had been the only valuable thing her parents had left her besides the tiny cottage which she had now put on lease to a newly wed couple for twice its original price ,she stroked his mane as they walked and smiled when his soft brown eyes settled on hers

"Don't you worry old boy, soon we'll be in the castle and you will be well fed and taken care of, you'll sleep in a proper stable and be a stable horse, you won't have to walk for hours anymore" she readjusted the reign so it wouldn't burn her fingers so much and angled Jack to walk ahead of the cobblestone bridge they had reached,she stood there and peered over the bridge looking at the large kingdom below it,she smiled and turned to the horse

"Well this is it,we here, we've reached Glaciemere"

The kingdom was large with the huge snowy mountains surrounding it like walls meant to shut every one else out,the main town rested in the middle of the mountains the only way in or out being the bridge, that was made over the ever frozen lake beneath it,the town glowed with its bright lights and Yvette couldn't help but imagine how lovely it would all look at night,she tugged the horse on continuing her trek. When she entered the town she was greeted by curious eyes but she was even more curious,her eyes darted from the shops to their cakes and jewelries on display,she stared at every passerby in awe, everyone in the kingdom seemed to have to have turned their lack of warmth into an incredible fashion,furs of different assortments were sewn onto necklines and sleeves,their shoes seemed to have something like a kind of thick cotton in them to prevent cold from getting to their feet and she was in love with it all,she yearned to make something of the sort,she yearned to learn from the designers of the master pieces she had seen and make hers in her own style,she found herself gaping at every passing lady as she stalked her way to the castle.

The walk to the castle took up quite alot of Yvette's time and when she arrived at the huge gates of the castle that seemed to loom at the whole town,she was half scared that she would lose the job,the guards at the front of the castle's gate stopped her progression towards the castle and demanded she state her business with one of the guards giving her a look she well recognised,the look that said here we go again with the poor folks ,she knew the men didn't consider her worthy of a proper greeting because of her shabby clothing but she took of the hood of her cape and curtised anyway

"I'm Yvette Burnerman, good sirs I am to meet a certain Mrs Sloane regarding the post vacancy" the men's brows raised as their gazes scanned her ,she knew it would be so ,she had always seen people's faces switch from the contempt of her poverty to instant admiration,the guard who had addressed her rudely grew flustered as her gaze met his,he ordered his colleagues to pull open the gate and he took old Jack from her as they walked in to the huge snowy clearing of the palace, the man murmured something and disappeared behind a wall with Jack when he returned he was looking sheepish

"I'm sorry if I came off as rude earlier on miss, I was just a bit....... spent " Yvette nodded trying to narrow her eyes,she had heard that one excuse before but she just kept her head down and let him lead the way

" Will Jack - he's my horse -"she added when he parted his lips to question her " Will he be fine?"

The guard lifted a brow as though she was being absurd "of course he will be , even the servants are well taken care of" he said, Yvette nodded and smiled again, eventually they turned a corner and walked into a large hall that would have served as a whole house for her,It was richly decorated with paintings and sculptures and a few luxury furnitures,it was warm and smelled of lavender,in the middle of it stood a slightly plump woman she had her silver streaked brown hair piled in a quiff untop her head,and when she looked up at the both of them from the brown parchment paper she had been reading, Yvette discovered a tiny crescent shaped glass resting on her nose and she looked Yvette up and down with the mannerism that indicated she was sizing her up. She turned to the guard and nodded ,

"She'll do, you are dismissed" Yvette watched the guard walk away and her eyes snapped back to the woman that was starting to move now, her sharp heels clicking in the marble floors, Yvette looked back and forth in shock

Was that it?,she thought, she hadn't expected a grand celebration and a red carpet for something as simple as employment but she had expected a ceremony of some sort, she snapped back to her senses when the woman turned back to see her rooted to the spot, she pursued after her immediately, trying to keep up with the woman's fast clicking

" I'm Madame Sloane" she said and spoke no more

Yvette thought she was a rather odd person, everything about her seemed uppity and carried a certain air about her. She brought Yvette to a smaller hall that had stairs on all it's sides that each led somewhere up in the large castle, where several other girls stood with three girls standing separately to the side ,they seemed like they were already employees because they wore similar uniforms,but the longer Yvette stared the more she realised something wasn't quite right, one of the girls looked incredibly exhausted,her brows were drawn together in frustration as though she would rather be somewhere else,her cheeks were hollow and her eyes seemed to lack light, when they locked with Yvette's, her's narrowed

" Yvette Williams, left wing" Sloane called her voice harsh and slightly raspy , Yvette turned startled out of the trance the strange maid had locked her in, she saw everyone's face fall for her in something that resembled pity

Why? She wondered

"Yvette Williams?!"

Sloane called again her impatience growing

"Here!" She called back " but my father's name isn't -"

" Be off with her" Sloane snapped interrupting her and pointing a finger at the strange maid" She'll show you around the left wing"

Yvette opened her mouth to tell her that her surname wasn't William but the woman's eyes narrowed

"No more questions"she said and turned back to her parchment "Next! Anne Uljy" Yvette turned and walked up to the strange looking maid who started to move towards one of the stairs immediately not bothering to spare her a glance,her heels clicking fast and sharp like Mrs Sloane's, Yvette spared the snappy woman one final glance at the woman barking orders and shrugged it could have been a pure mistake that the woman had probably mixed up her surname with someone else's with all her hastiness and her tiny glasses.

The girl in front of Yvette couldn't be any more years older than she was yet she moved like returning back up the stairs was a major burden for her ,at some point on their journey she turned to Yvette her feet still clicking away but her eyes remained on Yvette

" You should do away with those flat shoes,he doesn't like people moving about quietly in his space" she said and turned away again, Yvette was baffled

Who didn't like what?,was the girl messing with her?, she looked down at her sturdy black shoes that had carried her through the heavy snow and decided the girl was just being snubbish because her's had heels, and what ever did that matter to her? She was here to earn money to go to Paris and be a fashion designer not to compare assets with girls she didn't know, after all she didn't even have any assets that wasn't the cottage and old Jack. They bent another curve on the stairs and it was as though all the warmth was suddenly squeezed out, the long hall she found herself in seemed different from the rest of the castle,it was unbearably cold and the cold cut through her thin gloves once again biting at her flesh,she looked at the girl who continued to walk ahead as though the temperature didn't just drop by several many degrees, the girl's back still remained ramrod straight,she didn't flinch or even turn back to Yvette who walked behind her shaking from the sudden cold, after a while she turned a curve and opened a door to a dimly lit room where other girls sat around in a table with slight snacks and a steaming kettle,they all seemed grim and hollow, their eyes held zero hint of emotions and when they saw her their faces lapsed into something resembling pity and relief, Yvette stepped in past the strange girl who had escorted her and curtsied

" Good day to you ladies, I'm Yvette Burnerman and it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance" she said with her brightest smile